by Timothy Zahn
She was crouched between the two tables, holding a small sensor just above the floor. “Right here should do nicely,” she said, drawing a small circle on the thin carpet with her finger. “Zerba?”
“How deep?” he asked, crouching beside her and igniting his light-saber.
“About ten centimeters,” she said, attaching a hook to the carpet at that spot. “Doesn’t have to be precise—there aren’t any sensor wires under it.”
He nodded and carefully sliced a circle around the hook. He closed down the lightsaber, and she pulled out the plug. “Now, if they’ve done this properly,” she commented as she inserted the end of her optic line into the hole and moved it around, “they should have a crisscross grid of sensor wires … yep, there they are. Okay, Zerba: a meter-diameter circle from here to here. This deep.” She held up the plug to demonstrate. “This time, neatness counts.”
“Right.” Igniting his lightsaber again, Zerba got to work.
Han looked around the room, suddenly struck by an odd thought. His part of the field work was supposed to have ended with the delivery of the gimmicked data card to Villachor. In fact, according to the original plan, he should be in the suite right now, watching the Marblewood grounds with electrobinoculars and helping Rachele and Winter coordinate the rest of the operation. Right here, right now, he basically had nothing to do.
His eyes fell on the line of armored suits. Or maybe he did.
“Kell?” he invited quietly, walking over to the nearest suit. It didn’t look that complicated to get into.
“What?” Kell asked, coming up beside him.
“You know anything about these?”
“Nothing specific,” Kell said, running his fingers thoughtfully along the metal of the helmet. “Full life support, probably. Certainly has motion-echo power enhancement, half-face heads-up display, comm capability, and a partial sensor suite. Possibly targeting optics, too.”
“Thanks,” Han said dryly. A shame the kid didn’t know anything specific. “Give me a hand, will you?”
“Going someplace?” Bink asked, looking up from Zerba’s work.
“Thought I’d wander downstairs and see what Villachor’s up to,” Han told her, pulling experimentally on the armor’s torso. It lifted easily on its counterbalanced self-suit arm. “You three look like you’ve got this end pretty well covered. Don’t you?”
“Pretty much,” Bink said as she and Zerba lifted out the circle of flooring and set it to the side.
Han craned his neck to look into the hole as he worked his left leg and hip into the lower section of armor. Beneath the main floor was a multiple zigzag grid of wires a couple of centimeters apart set into a subfloor. “Is that the alarm?”
“That’s it,” Bink confirmed. “A randomized, variable-pulse flicker field, to be specific. You can put jumpers across the lines all day and still not hit all the combinations.”
“So what do we do?” Kell asked.
“We first make sure there aren’t any unwelcome surprises waiting for us below,” she said, tapping a part of the subfloor between two of the wires. “Zerba? A hole straight through here, if you please. As small as you can manage.”
Zerba nodded and again ignited his lightsaber. This time, instead of cutting with the edge, he carefully pushed the blade straight down into the floor. There was a small jolt as he broke through the other side, and he quickly closed it down. “I guess a lightsaber cuts through magsealed armor plate just fine,” he commented.
“Never thought it wouldn’t,” Bink assured him. She slipped her optic line into the hole, turned it around a couple of times.
“Well?” Han asked.
With a puff of exhaled air, Bink pulled out the line and leaned back. “He did it,” she announced. “Villachor shut down the Zeds for us.”
“Awfully nice of him,” Kell said. “What about the alarm?”
“Patience, child, patience,” Bink said. She took another deep breath, puffed this one out as well, and leaned forward again. “First job is to slow everything down to a manageable rate,” she continued, putting her optic line back into the hole and turning it slowly around. “See, the regulator and randomizer cascade switch for the whole thing are … right over there.” She pointed toward the wall beneath the sideboard. “Hitting them in just the right spots will slow the flicker pattern without shutting it down completely, and therefore not trigger any alarms.”
“You need me to cut you a hole over there?” Zerba asked, starting to get to his feet.
“Don’t bother,” Bink said. Pulling her hold-out blaster from its belly holster, she lowered it into the hole, lined it up carefully with the optic line, and carefully squeezed the trigger. The hole lit up briefly with the shot; shifting aim slightly, she fired again. Setting the blaster on the floor beside her, she ran her sensor over the zigzag wires again. “Perfect,” she said.
“Now what?” Zerba asked.
“There are a couple of ways of bypassing a grid like this,” she said. “But they take time, and we’re in a hurry. So we’re going to be clever.” She nodded back toward the equipment cabinets behind her. “Zerba, go find me one of those neuronic whips, will you?”
“A neuronic whip?” Zerba echoed, frowning, as he stood up.
Han glanced at the collection of weapons racked beside his armor. Along with a half dozen blasters were two of the whips. “Here,” he said, detaching one from its peg and tossing it across to Bink. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”
“It’s really very simple,” she said as she uncoiled it. “Neuronic whips adapt to the neural characteristics of whatever skin they happen to be touching, right?”
Kell’s mouth dropped open. “You’re joking.”
“Not at all,” she assured him as she carefully laid out the whip in a circle on top of the wire grid. “It’s not fast enough to adapt to a normal flicker-field, which is why no one bothers to worry about them. But with the randomizer slowed down, the whip should pick up the incoming pulses and echo them just fine.” Giving the whip’s positioning a final adjustment, she reached in to the handle and activated the switch.
There was a crackle of energy from the whip, accompanied by a flash of blue-white light. The whip flashed again, then settled down into a flickering blue glow.
“And that should be that,” Bink concluded.
“Do we need to be worried about the should in that sentence?” Zerba asked.
“Let’s find out.” Bink gestured into the hole. “Make a hole, Zerba. Be sure to stay inside the circle of the whip.”
Zerba took it slow and careful, clearly expecting a blare of alarms to go off somewhere midway through the procedure and just as clearly surprised when they didn’t. As he worked, Bink unfolded a small but sturdy tripod lifter and set it up over the hole, and Han could see its legs strain as it slowly took the weight of the section of subflooring and the armor plate beneath it. By the time Kell eased the helmet shut over Han’s head, they had the hole cut and the plug ratcheted up, and they were maneuvering the circle of material out of their way.
“How’s it look?” Han asked.
“See for yourself,” Bink’s muffled voice came faintly through the helmet.
“How?” Han growled, glaring at the darkness in front of him.
And then, suddenly, the inside faceplate lit up with a view of the room, overlaid with range markings. There was a tiny inset infrared version in the upper right corner and an equally tiny rear view in the upper left. “That better?” Kell’s voice came normally in his ears.
“Yeah,” Han said, looking over the display. There was a status bar running along the bottom of the image, marking comm setting, power levels, auditory levels, and advanced sensor options.
“Controls should be right here,” Kell said, turning Han’s left arm over and indicating the inner wrist area. “You see anything?”
“I do now,” Han said, smiling tightly. Where he’d seen only bare metal from outside the suit, the heads-up display now indicated a h
alf dozen buttons and touch sliders. Experimentally he reached over with his right hand and tapped the telescopic button, then ran the finger along the slider. The image in front of him jumped, zooming in on the controls, the arm, and the section of floor beyond them. “Yeah, got it,” he said, moving the slider back and keying off the telescopics. “Any place in here to put an extra comlink? I’m guessing this one is locked into the security circuit.”
“Yeah, there should be room right here,” Kell said, touching the helmet behind the right-hand cheek flange. “There’s a disguised air intake behind the flange. Let me see if I can wedge mine in there for you … Okay, that should do it. Zerba?”
Zerba pulled out his comlink. “Testing?”
“Got it,” Han said. The sound from the comlink was faint, but as long as it didn’t get too noisy outside he should be able to hear well enough. “Okay, I’m heading down. Good luck with the safe.”
“Wait a second.” Bink pulled a small comm signaler from her pocket and tossed it to Kell. “As long as you’re in an accessorizing mood, Kell, see if you can find a spot for this.”
“No problem—it should fit right below the comlink,” Kell said. “Let me see … there. Right below the comlink, Han. Push it straight forward to trigger.”
“Wait a second,” Zerba said, frowning at Bink. “I thought you were going to handle that part.”
“Han’s going to be down there watching the show anyway,” Bink pointed out. “He might as well have the honor. Besides, he’ll have a better view and angle than I will.”
“She’s right,” Han agreed, looking at the weapons rack. All he needed to complete his new outfit was something that packed the maximum punch at close range.
His eyes fell on a Caliban Model X heavy blaster pistol: fifty shots fully charged, a sixty-meter range, and nearly as powerful as a full blaster rifle. It would do nicely.
He slipped the Caliban into his armor’s right-hand side holster. Then, almost as an afterthought, he unhooked the other neuronic whip and secured it to his left hip. “Watch yourselves,” he said as he headed out.
“You too,” Kell said.
A moment later Han was on his way, clumping along the hallway, a bad feeling tugging at him. This was Bink’s part of the operation, and if she pulled it off, it would be the crowning point of her entire career. There was no way in the galaxy she would hand off the grand moment to him. Not unless she had a very good reason to do so.
Unfortunately, that reason wasn’t hard to guess. The minute she had the safe open, she was going to head across the mansion and find her sister.
He muttered a curse, feeling the breath bounce off his heads-up display back into his lips. Problem was, she’d never make it. Not alone. Absolutely not alone and with Marblewood’s whole security force stirred up the way they were. The division of tasks in this whole thing had been very clear: Lando and Chewbacca at the mansion’s north end would go after Tavia; Bink, Zerba, and Kell at the south end would deal with the safe. That had been the arrangement from the start, and none of Lando’s last-minute tweaks had changed it.
Bink, apparently, was going to do so anyway.
And there was nothing Han could do about it. Not unless they wanted to scratch the job and have all of them troop off after Tavia together, and they’d come way too far for that.
All he could do was hope that Bink would calm down and think it through. As long as Qazadi didn’t know who was on whose side—or even what the sides were—he would be a fool to push Tavia too hard. Especially with the question of the cryodex still up in the air. If Bink would just relax a little, maybe she’d see that she could back off and let Lando and Chewbacca get her sister out.
Because if she didn’t, they might well wind up with two prisoners to be rescued instead of one.
And there was a very good chance that Qazadi would decide he didn’t need to keep both of them alive.
With a sizzle of old-fashioned chemical propellant, the first of the fireworks shot upward from the Marblewood grounds. The propellant burned out, and there was a moment of anticipation as nothing seemed to happen. Then, with a burst of vibrant color, the rocket exploded, shooting tiny stars into the air to soar, swoop, and then fade into oblivion.
Sitting against one of the chimney spires where the shadows were the deepest, Dayja frowned. Fireworks, he knew, were the traditional finale to the Festival of Four Honorings. But that finale was supposed to wait until full dark, and they still had fifteen or twenty minutes until then. Had something else gone wrong?
Maybe. On the other hand, maybe someone had noticed that the spate of rampaging droids had threatened to spark a mass exodus of the visitors and was hoping to stem that flow by starting the fireworks a little early.
If that was the plan, it definitely seemed to be working. As a second rocket sizzled upward and then burst, Dayja could see that the flow of people toward the exits had slowed as the visitors turned back to watch the show.
Only …
Frowning, Dayja broke open his fake holocamera and extracted the knife and the small but powerful electrobinoculars tucked away inside. Slipping the weapon into his sleeve, where it would be handy if he needed it, he activated the electrobinoculars and focused on the low wall surrounding the grounds.
According to the faintly glowing indicator lights, Marblewood’s umbrella shield was still active.
A third rocket exploded overhead, this one spitting its stars into a serise-flower pattern. Leaving the shield up for these smaller ones was all well and good. But the larger, more elaborate fireworks later in the show were designed to travel considerably higher before exploding. If the shield was still up when those were fired, they were either going to spatter early or possibly even ricochet down into the crowd.
Maybe Villachor already had that covered and would be dropping the shield before the show got to the point of endangering the visitors.
Or maybe endangering the visitors was exactly what someone else had in mind
Either way, it would be very interesting to watch.
The big round safe was halfway across the room, moving ponderously on its floating platform, as Bink slid down through the hole in the ceiling.
To her relief, the Zeds spaced around the room remained silent and motionless. There’d always been the chance, however slim, that Villachor would reconsider his strategy and reactivate them. Watching through the hole above her, Zerba and Kell were almost as silent as the droids.
Which was just as well, since Bink didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now.
Had Han figured it out? Probably. He could be a pretty fair judge of people when he put his mind to it, and he knew her well enough to be able to read her reactions. Of course, just giving him the spare trigger should have been all the hint he’d have needed.
But he hadn’t done anything to stop her. He hadn’t even said anything. Probably had known it would be a waste of time.
Because Tavia was in danger, and Bink was the one who’d put her there. And as much as she liked and trusted Chewbacca, she had no intention of letting him carry the football on this one alone.
But first she had a job to do, if for no other reason than that it would ensure that this was the last time her sister would ever have to be in this kind of danger.
She landed with a quiet thump on the floor, glancing once at the doorway and then moving toward the floating safe, studying it as she walked. As Rachele had described earlier, the platform was slowly rotating as it traced its path around the ballroom. Not very quickly, probably only about once every three minutes.
Unfortunately, at this point any rotation was a problem. Their first task, therefore, was to get it stopped.
There was a soft thump from behind her, and she looked back to see Kell disengaging from the syntherope. “Anywhere in particular you want me to start?” he stage-whispered.
“You don’t need to whisper,” Bink told him. “The place is completely soundproof.”
Kell glanced up, as if he was goin
g to point out that the open hole above them was most definitely not soundproof. Fortunately, he seemed to think better of it. “I was thinking we should kill the platform’s movement,” he continued in an only slightly louder voice as he hurried toward her. “Otherwise, the timing—”
“Exactly,” Bink cut him off. “Think you can do that without dropping everything?”
Kell nodded. “No problem.”
“Then do it.”
He nodded again and strode past her, pulling out his compact tool kit and one of his small detonite charges. Bink watched as Zerba rappelled down, landing with considerably more bounce than either she or Kell had managed. “You ready?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, hurrying toward her. “You going to be able to find the door? I’m not crazy about the idea of poking randomly into that thing.”
“I wouldn’t be crazy about it, either,” Bink said. “Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”
The stairs unfolded as they approached, just as Rachele had said they would. Bink climbed up onto the platform and began slowly circling, running her fingers over the surface of the duracrete, looking for the telltale scuff marks Winter had identified. Midway through the operation she felt the platform come to a smooth halt. “Got it,” Kell called up to them. “I’ll start setting the charges.”
“Good,” Bink called back, scowling at the safe. It would be just her luck if she’d started right past the proper finger holes and was going to have to go all nine and a half meters around the edge of the sphere before she found them.
But the universe had decided to play nice today. Two steps later, she spotted the marks.
